Rumors of War: The Theme Deck

I have a number of thought experiments that I perform on a regular basis to get myself in the mindset to develop Rumors of War and related projects. While thinking about the next several pages I’ll need to write and build to complete the current story arc, the idea of a Rumors of War-themed deck built from Magic: the Gathering crossed my mind.

The basic idea is to take the themes and concepts I’ve devised for the comic and see how they translate into a deck. It gets me thinking about game design, play strategy, and the inherent themes of the comic, as told through the perspective of another game. It’s sort of like taking personality tests for your characters, or writing out profiles for them. I’m taking the themes of the comic and translating them into another medium.

I started as soon as I got home from work, and I’ve already made a little progress. I figured out on the bus that Rumors of War is probably blue, black, and white, and I thought of a few card concepts to aim for, though it’s going to be tough to narrow it down to 60 cards. Some of the concepts I started with are: disease, fear, confusion, divination, manipulation, philosophy, bureaucracy, pacifism, clerics, and wizards.

I likely won’t post the final build, because it might well be chock full of spoilers. I could always change my mind, though, and depending on what I end up with, or I might post some excerpts. One of my stipulations, of course, is building a deck that could actually compete. As a result, I could be working on it for some time, I haven’t built a deck that used more than two colors in ages, and I don’t think I’ve ever made a successful one.